Tutorial 3D Canvas

Open any painting or photo that you would like to apply a 3D Canvas look it it. Here am going to use one of my earlier painting I did a few years ago. Don't work on your original image, work on a duplicate and close the original one.

Now you are going to duplicate this one 2 times, this will give you 3 image on top of each other. Check in your layer manager to make sure.

Select the bottom layer in your layer manager, if you have the first layer merge as a background then choose the background to work on.

Once it is select, click on effect/Fills and Textures/Texture Filter.

In the Texture Filter window, we are going to select the emboss one. This will give a 3 dimension to our image.

Now we are going to add a texture. Browse where you're original is and select it. Click ok.

Your image should appear in the Texture image box.

This is the setting I have apply for my painting, we want to have a very high emboss, you may want the level a bit less or way up to 50, it depend of your image. You'll have to play with it and look at the preview before clicking ok.

Also The transparency makes a difference, I have set mine at 20 here, you may want a bit lower or higher than this.

But do remember that we need a high emboss on our first image.

This is a part of my painting with the emboss setting above. Cool we already have a 3D look but it is to much.

This is why we have a second layer that we will work on next.

Let's move on.

Open your Layer Manager, as you could see, my first image is my base image this is where I did apply the high emboss. I have also lock the two layer, to make sure I do not move them while working.

Now select the layer above the image you have apply the filter. This should be the middle image.

You could close the layer manager so it is not in you way.

We are going to apply the Texture Filter again on this one, choose emboss again but this time we are going to apply a canvas texture. I just did choose one from PhotoImpact.

Apply the same setting as in the example on the left here. As you can see the level is very low and the transparency very high. We need a very low emboss, just to show a soft texture on our layer.

Depending of the canvas texture you choose, you may vary the setting, just remember that we want a low emboss on this layer.

This is an example of the setting above for our second layer. As you could see the canvas texture is soft.

Now the fun part begin.

Keep your layer select and choose the eraser tool. Depending of the area you may vary the size the rest of the setting stay as default.

We are going to erase where we want to have the 3D emerge from the painting below. We don't want to have it all over on our painting. By doing this erasing, it will give the illusion that the paint is build up on the canvas. I decided to make the tree thrunk on the foreground, a bit of the leaf and branches as well as a few spot on the rock, mountain and sky where I had lighter colour.

Tip: You may want to turn off the view Show marquee, you want have those running ants in the way.

This is a part of the painting I have erase.

Here are the two layer together. Where I did erase the soft canvas on the second layer doesn't show and it gives your painting a more natural look.

This step is Optional. If you really want to have an oil look, this step is a must.

Open your Layer Manager and choose the top layer. Under the merge drop down menu where you already have Always selected choose Soft Light.

Close the Layer Manager.

This is an example with the merge setting to Soft Light apply.

Below is the full view of the painting.

Hope it was a help to you and if you have any question or need help you could contact me or find me on the PhotoImpact International Board.

Painting on this site are copyright of the artist and therefore are just for viewing